


The Importance of Being Derek

by unacaritafeliz



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Chapters are (in order), Cooking, Gen, No Dialogue, Plant Magic, Self-Reflection, Writing, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-24 10:15:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17702453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unacaritafeliz/pseuds/unacaritafeliz
Summary: [Various soft one-shots about our best boy, Derek Malik Nurse. My contribution to Nursey Week 2019].





	1. Home Sweet Home

**Author's Note:**

> If you've never read my fic before, I have a lot of established headcanons that I made up last Nursey Week and have reused often. I'll reuse them here too, so some context:
> 
> Derek's white dad, Jonathan (Papa), and his black mom, Amina (Ma) have been divorced since Derek was 9, and are on friendly terms now. They also have a daughter, Farrah, who is 7 years older than Derek and The Best Big Sister Ever. Amina lives in Manhattan with her parents (Grandma and Grandpa) and her new wife Paloma (Mami) who is Chilean and married Amina when Derek was fifteen. Jonathan hasn't remarried and lives in Brooklyn with his girlfriend of three years, Cynthia, and her three kids - Mark (16), Sylvia and Katie (twins, 12), all of whom are Chinese.
> 
> Alexander Phillips, aka Pips, is Derek's first boyfriend and the love of my life. They were defense partners at Andover, but ultimately broke up when he went to Princeton and Derek went to Samwell. It was a mutual thing, but Derek's never quite gotten completely over him.
> 
> Okay, enough context - let's go!

August 2016, Second Day of Junior Year

Derek feels a little clandestine, sneaking into the Haus kitchen with his groceries, at 4:00pm on a sunny Wednesday afternoon. He's technically not supposed to be in here - Bitty banned him from the Haus kitchen for life after he accidentally dropped a container of pie filling during Hausgiving in his freshman year - but the thing is, for Derek cooking is like hockey, or writing, or breathing. It's not something he's perfect at, but it's something he's good at, something he loves, something that makes him feel at home.

And goddamn it - he lives here now. He deserves to feel at home.

Derek's prepared for the argument he's going to have to make tomorrow, when Bitty gets in for his senior year, but tonight, he's got free reign of the kitchen. Apart from Derek, Ollie and Wicky are the only people to have come back to Samwell so far, and Derek knows it'd take something huge to pull either of them away from the massive HGTV-style room makeover currently taking place in the attic. They're probably planning takeout for dinner. Derek reckons he can coax them into eating with him.

Derek places the grocery bags down on the counter. He takes his headphones off, and plugs his phone into Bitty's speakers instead. The sound of ATCQ fills the air, vastly different from the Beyoncé beats that usually characterise the kitchen. Maybe that should make him feel guiltier about using it without Bitty's permission, but it doesn't. Instead it makes the space his; turns his lifetime ban into a nonsensical memory.

Derek unpacks the grocery bags, making sure he sticks the onions in the freezer, the way his Papa always does. He grabs his recipe notebook from the kitchen library; he'd left it with Everyone else's cookbooks when he moved in yesterday. He's made this dish enough times over the past six years to not need the recipe, but he always reads along when he cooks. The battered, old notebook - a smorgasbord of different cultures and cuisines, densely packed with the handwriting and favourite recipes of everyone he's ever loved - is precious to him, and reading it while he cooks only ever makes him feel more connected to the people he loves.

Today's recipe is on page two; his grandfather's famous red beans and rice. It's one of the recipes that remind him of his childhood, and it's one of the most comforting recipes in the book. If he's honest, he'd really prefer to be make collard greens and cornbread for his first Haus meal, but doing so would mean using the oven. This may be his home now, but Betsy II still technically belongs to Bitty, and Derek's not super keen on using her without asking first, and he's not dumb enough to ask without first proving he won't destroy the kitchen. Derek reads through the recipe once first, his finger tracing his grandfather's cramped writing, before grabbing the knives and chopping boards and getting started.

He starts by chopping the Halal sausage into thin slices. He'd always been in charge of chopping at home, his Grandma had taught him at a young age how to slice them thin and even, how to move quick enough to be efficient, but careful enough that he didn't lose his fingers. If Derek closed his eyes right now - which he won't, because he's using a large knife and he's not completely stupid - he could be in the kitchen of their New York brownstone, five years old and making dinner with Grandma and Grandpa and Farrah while they waited for Ma and Papa to get home.

The next job is the peppers. Growing up, his family had only ever used green peppers in the dish, but Mami was so fond of red and yellow peppers that Derek always uses those too; the amendment to the recipe is is squeezed into the margin of his notebook in Mami's pretty typewriter script. After the peppers, Derek chops the celery and then takes the onions out of the freezer to chop those too. The freezer was his Papa's trick to stop the onions from making him cry; Derek's not really sure how well it works - Shitty, in particular, has always been adamant that chopping next to a cup of boiling water works better - but Derek's been freezing his onions for so long that it wouldn't feel right to do it any other way.

Finally done with the prep, Derek pulls out the Dutch Oven pot he bought with him - and God, Bitty's going to lose his damn mind when he sees it - and turns on the stove. He heats up the vegetable oil and slowly adds the ingredients and spices to the pot, crosschecking his moves and timing with the recipe to make sure everything is done right. The more things he adds, the better the room smells. It's not like the Haus kitchen ever smells bad - how could it, when something sweet is almost always in the oven? - but Derek's never known it to smell like this; warm and spicy and just like home.

He honestly can't believe that he hasn't cooked in the two years he's been at Samwell. In his defense, he hadn't really needed to; unlike Andover - which served food so white and bland that Derek was forced to sneak into the kitchens and learn to cook just to have something flavoursome to eat - Samwell offers Derek a good variety of tasty food in both their dining halls and independent eateries and Bitty's food, albeit white, is good old-fashioned southern food; rich, tasty and comforting. Despite this though, Derek probably would've still cooked it he had somewhere to do it - but his dorm kitchen was gross and... well.. lifetime ban from the Haus kitchen and all.

At least that's in the past now. Derek lives here now, and will happily demand access to the kitchen whenever he can - providing he's not drowning in hockey, or homework, or the poetry semester he's going to TA this year.

When everything is added to the pot, Derek puts the lid on to let it simmer. It'll take two full hours to cook, and Derek reckons he'll sit in the kitchen and finish the leftover paperwork from his summer internship while he waits. First though, he needs to wash up. It's not something he usually does - he's kind of spoiled in that his Grandparents always did the washing up when he was a kid, and Pips used to wash up whenever they snuck into the kitchens at Andover since Derek always did the cooking (Pips's mug cake is the only recipe of his that made it into Derek's notebook and that was more for sentimental reasons than because the mug cake was edible) - but Derek doesn't mind doing it. There's something calming about making everything clean, about putting everything back where it needs to be.

The one last thing Derek needs to do for dinner is to make the rice. Cynthia, the queen of time saving life hacks, taught Derek how to make rice in the microwave, using nothing more than a Tupperware container with a vent in the lid. He knows that it's not really the proper way of cooking rice - Lardo had nearly disowned him when he'd mentioned it to her - but it's fast and reliable, and necessary since Lardo took the Haus rice cooker with her when she moved to Boston. He washes the rice carefully, and leaves the Tupperware on the kitchen counter, ready to be cooked when they're ready to eat.

He goes upstairs to get his papers and sets up at the kitchen table in the spicy warmth. He's left his recipe notebook on the table, and he allows it to distract him for a few moments. He hopes before the year is over that he can make at least one meal from everyone in the book; his Ma's collard greens and his Papa's garlic mash potatoes, his Mami's Humitas and Cynthia's Lo Mein as well as Shitty's toasted sandwiches and Lardo's vietnamese paper rolls and Ransom's Jollof rice and even Pip's goddamn mug cake. He hopes he's filled the notebook with more recipes by the end of the year too, hopes he can finally get Bitty and Chowder's to write down their famous dishes, and maybe pick up some stuff from Foxtrot too.

He closes the recipe notebook, and gets started on his paperwork. There's only an hour and a half until he can pull Ollie and Wicky down from the attic and introduce them to one of his favourite dishes. Hopefully there's enough left for Bitty too - so Derek can prove that he deserves use of the kitchen too - but it doesn't matter if there isn't. Derek can work something out.

The Haus finally feels like home and Derek's damn sure going to keep it that way.


	2. For the Culture

Derek's latest poetry assignment is the kind of homework he doesn't want to do in his room at the Haus, or in the stacks at Founders, or anywhere he'll be found by the team. As much as he's grown to love and trust them, he's still only really let a few of them see past his chill exterior and into the soft, vulnerable soul underneath. It's the kind of assignment he'd prefer to write back in New York - in the kitchen of his Ma's brownstone, or in the living room of his Papa's new house, surrounded by his sisters - but he can't indulge that wish; he knows that if he went home whenever he was homesick, he'd never leave Samwell. Instead he finds a good pile of golden, crunchy leaves in the quad and flops down on it to write.

The assignment is to write a series of poems centered around culture and identity. It's kind of ridiculous that he's struggling this much, because Derek's always had a good grasp of his own identity, even when it was, objectively, confusing and different to everyone else he knew. He's not sure what's the hardest part - having to summarize twenty years of complex feelings and soul searching into half a dozen short poems, or trying to romanticise his own life into something poem-worthy. He figures he'll do what he usually does when he needs help starting an assignment: start writing, pen a unfiltered stream of consciousness about who he is and what he believes, and worry about shaping it into something sensical, intelligent and appropriate for class later.

He pulls up a blank text file on his laptop, takes a sip of water and gets started.

He decides he should start with the most obvious and defining aspect of his identity; his ethnicity. He writes down a messy half completed metaphor about how he and Farrah are technically black and white - in that their mom is black and their dad is white - but are really made up of varying shades of grey, different from every angle and different to every different pair of eyes that sees them. He writes about being a black face in rich, mostly-white school, a black player in a contact-heavy, mostly-white sport, a physically imposingly tattooed black man in a city that seemed to be afraid of people like him. He writes about feeling like Farrah was the only one who understood him, and how often he felt othered by his peers. He write about society's requirement that he be chill, in a way it never demanded his white cousins to be. He writes about how that requirement made him turn to hockey and writing, both outlets for his frustrations and emotions.

He writes about how he hates that some of the most important characteristics about himself were born to keep the rest of the world happy with him.

He writes about Chile as an extension of his own ethnic identity; a culture that doesn't belong to him but has still been a part of his story since he was fifteen years old. He makes a note about Pablo Neruda; he's not sure what it is yet, but he knows there's a way to turn Mami's love of Neruda's poetry, and consequent gifting of it to her new, poetry-obsessed, teenaged son, into some glorious imagery. He's certainly got enough emotional energy to take that particular thought to interesting places; he can't ever forget the way he felt when Mami gifted him the book on his fifteenth birthday.

This thought sends him on a spiral of thoughts about inherited identity versus found identity. He writes about how his Ma taught him the value hard work when the cards are stacked against him, and how his Papa taught him the importance of being emotional and kind in a world that raises stoic and unfeeling men. He writes about how Mami taught him that family is more than blood and how Cynthia, and her kids, taught him the importance of being the person other people need him to be.

He wonders if he could make a whole poem about the way he feels for those kids. About the way that, after eighteen years as the baby of the family, Derek was turned into an older brother - a new aspect of his identity he never planned for. He jots down a note about that, as well as a note of the disconnect between the Nurse siblings and the Chang siblings, stemming from entire lives lived apart, but the love that was there instantly anyway. He writes about the desire to do anything he could to make the three of them happy, and his wish to be a good role model for them.

Derek stops typing; this particular train of thought grinding to a halt. He takes a drink of water as he reads over what he's written. It's not bad - albeit unfinished and very unpolished. He deserves a break though so he sets his laptop to the side and grabs his phone. He checks his notifications - nothing too much, apparently Chowder is destroying Ollie and Wicky in Mario Kart back at the Haus and Shitty's having some sort of standoff with the new mystery hausmate in Haus 2.0 - and sends a text out to his sibling group chat. It's just Farrah and Mark in the chat - Katie and Sylvia are still too young to have phone plans - and he knows he won't get an immediate response because Mark's in class and Farrah is probably at work, but it still feels good to let them know he's thinking of them.

He stows his phone and gets back to work.

The next obvious aspect of his identity is his bisexuality. He wonders if he can wrap it up in a metaphor, make it something more original than every other queer person's relationship with their sexuality. But first, he writes everything in the most basic form he knows - just so it's there on paper. He's writes about his gratitude for growing up in a queer friendly household - about how his Ma's open and honest bisexuality, paired with her marriage to a woman, made attraction to all genders normal to him from a young age. He talks about sneaking around Andover with Pips, the thrill of their affection countered with the fear of being caught and the inexplicable shame he sometimes felt. He writes about the camaraderie of making gay jokes with other queer people, and about how sometimes he feels like the bisexual flag is branded on his skin, and sometimes it feels like a word he's not allowed to touch. He writes about how some people think his identity starts and ends with bisexuality, and others feel like bisexuality doesn't affect his identity at all and how both groups are people are really, really wrong.

He goes back to his messy notes about his ethnicity and adds a similar note there. He's damn proud of being black and being bi and it's a hugely important part of his identity, but it's doesn't define everything that he is.

He scrolls back down and starts listing other aspects of his identity. He loves to cook (and maybe there's a metaphor there for cooking as an expression of cultural identity). He loves to write. He wants to be a children's book author, and write stories for kids who are underrepresented in mainstream media. He's a good friend - or at least, Chowder and Foxtrot act like he is - a doting older brother and the most annoying younger brother in existence. He's a team player. He's trilingual. He's Muslim, even though he doesn't adhere to some of their beliefs as strongly as he could (and maybe that's another aspect of identity worth exploring - the feeling of only half belonging to something, and not being quite good enough to fully claim it). He's hardworking, and funny, and a little vain, and passionate about social justice.

He's a person that tries to be the best person he can be.

Derek purposefully puts the full stop on the end of his last sentence. He's got two full pages of notes. He knows it won't all be usable - he's supposed to write poetry about his identity not an autobiography of his life - but he knows he's got a lot of good emotions down on paper, that can definitely be reworked into a series of poems.

Derek smiles to himself as he saves the document and copy-pastes the notes to a new document to start rearranging his thoughts into more abstract categories that he can work with. He's got this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I struggled a lot with this prompt but hopefully it came out okay!


	3. Another Life

Derek probably wouldn't fare well in the Zombie Apocalypse.

It's not something he thinks about often. His own personal brand of fantasy fiction is more romantic - think warriors and nobility and fighting dragons and saving people - rather than the horror that comes from legions of undead, but Ollie and Wicky are on the couch watching some ugly white man bash some slightly less ugly white man's head in with a baseball bat on The Walking Dead in the Haus living room and, since Chowder's out with Farmer and Derek doesn't really want to sit alone in his room, he's stuck watching it with them.

It's not that Derek thinks he'd necessarily be bad in the apocalypse, but there's honestly a lot stacked against him. Even if the real world doesn't conform to the Black Dudes Always Die First trope - and, if he's being honest, he wouldn't be surprised if it did considering how much other shit is unfair to him - he's clumsy and a bit of a space cadet and only has one usable arm at the moment.

Less personally, the fact that he's living in Samwell isn't in his favour. In its defense, Samwell is less densely populated than New York, -but it's also got less supplies - he doubts there are enough supplies at the problematic Stop and Shops to provide for the entire student population, and there's definitely no serious weapons anywhere near campus. The Haus itself is probably the weakest place in the whole campus anyway - there's no way the shitty wood would stand against even one zombie. They'd have to get out as soon as they could.

Hopefully the entire hockey team could make it out together - there's no way he'd want to leave anyone behind. Whiskey might be a little hard - bringing Whiskey with them would mean bringing at least one LAX bro, and the LAX team are definitely be the worst people to have in your party during an apocalypse - but Tango and Foxtrot wouldn't leave Whiskey behind and Derek sure as shit isn't going anywhere without Denice Ford. Not only would the SMH fall apart without her, but Derek's pretty sure Foxtrot could probably get a undead zombie to go back to being dead by just staring at it. Derek supposes they'll just have to work with it - between the three of them, he and Chowder and Foxtrot could convince the LAX bro to be on his best behaviour.

Speaking of C, he'd definitely insist on going over to get Farmer from the volleyball house - assuming that the two of them weren't already in the same Haus together. Derek definitely wouldn't complain about the trip, even though it'd take them closer to the center of campus, rather than the exist. The thing is, Caitlin Farmer is another person he could not leave behind. And honestly? Having some of the volleyball girls with them wouldn't be a bad idea. They're all so kick ass even in this mundane world; Derek would bet his life that they'd be boss at killing zombies.

So they'd get geared up and head to the volleyball house. He's not sure what they could take with them. Bitty hates buying canned goods instead of fresh so there's probably not a lot of non-perishables they could load their packs with. He'd definitely have to talk Louis out of taking his speakers. In terms of weapons - they'd have Bitty knife collection and their hockey blades and sticks and... not much else. It won't be perfect, but they'll make it to the volleyball house just fine. Ollie and Wicky would probably help them all through by surprising them with their competency at zombie slaying - assuming, of course, that those two assholes didn't abandon the group to begin with.

After picking up Farmer and her friends... where would they go? Boston's the closest place of note and, although it never works out for movie protagonists, Derek thinks it might maybe make sense to go to a big city first. Surely if the apocalypse is in early enough stages they'd have some sort of safe house in the cities? Derek would assume so, but knowing this government, there'd probably be nothing useful implemented until too late. Even so, he'd probably still use that argument to get them to Boston, purely for selfish reasons. Not only does Farrah live there - and maybe Derek's a baby, but surely even a zombie apocalypse would be somewhat more bearable with his big sister by his side - but Haus 2.0 is in Boston too, and Derek's pretty sure there's not a group of people more suited to taking on a motherfucking Zombie Apocalypse than Ransom, Holster, Lardo and Shitty.

So Derek can assume they'll go to Boston first. It's not far, and they'd have to be pretty fucking incompetent to let anyone die on the way there. There'll be a pretty epic moment where Bitty bashes a zombie's brain in with a frying pan, like some kind of Georgian Samwise Gamgee. And there'll be one, terrifying moment where Derek, ever the klutz, trips while fighting and comes this close to dying but, just as his life flashes before his life, Chowder will use his goalies reflexes to save him while Farmer takes down the zombie with one of C's skate. It'd be kind of hot, actually. Derek might end up half in love with the pair of them. Which he's... not already in love with them. He's not okay? It'd definitely take a zombie apocalypse for him to have feelings for his two best friends.

Anyway, they get to Boston and expand their group - assuming, of course, that Farrah and Haus 2.0 haven't done something stupid like left their homes and therefore given up any chance of ever being found since communications would definitely be down by then. Now what would they do? Derek things they'll have to start by raid the supermarkets to stock up on as much food, medicine and bottled water as possible - during the supply run, Holster will momentarily lose his glasses and will therefore very narrowly avoid being bitten in the neck, causing an adrenaline filled Ransom to not only save his best friend, but end the years of unresolved sexual tension between them by kissing him full on the mouth. After that, they'd have to plan their next move.

The smart move, according to Derek's logical brain at least, would be to shack up together somewhere until either the authorities dealt with the apocalypse, they ran out of supplies, or everyone was ready to murder Shitty for being loud and obnoxious but... well the SMH is never really the type of group who would do the smart thing. They're all too emotionally charged to ever listen to their logical brains.

Bitty would worry about Jack. Jack is the kind of person they'd need in the apocalypse - being their OG Captain, as well as being the most sensible of them all, he's the natural leader of the group - but he's also their friend, and Derek would want him with them even if he'd drag them all down with him - which, Derek wants to reiterate, he wouldn't. Assuming he wasn't across the country on a roadie - they'd be shit out of luck if he was - he'd probably be on his way up to Boston from Providence. Their best bet there would be to stay in Boston until Jack showed up, but that plan might make Bitty die from worry. They wouldn't be able to contact Jack, but would they be able to convince Bitty just to wait it out and hope Jack finds them sooner rather than later?

And also, people will be worried about their families, right? Chow and Farms, poor Californians that they are, would have unfortunately probably had to give up on getting any news of their families before the end of the apocalypse, but Derek's sure most of his East Coast Beast Coast teammates would be keen to check on their families. He'd for sure be obsessed with trying to get back home to New York but, even assuming he could get a team to go with him - and who, except for Farrah, would go to New York during an apocalypse just to look for Nursey's almost step-siblings? - New York is a long way away. There'd be a lot more obstacles on the way to New York than they encountered on the way to Boston; a lot more zombies for Nursey to accidentally stumble into, and maybe even some mean people that think the undead isn't enough to deal with in an apocalypse - like the ugly as fuck white man on TV who just killed the cute Asian, and, God this show is racist, huh? - who might try to kill them themselves.

They'd definitely lose people on the way to New York one way or another, but Derek won't even let his imagination decide for a moment who those people could be. Of course, helping Mark, Sylvia and Katie would be his first priority if the world ended, but he can't imagine losing any of his friends to do so. Sure, he and Farrah could leave Boston alone, but could Derek really leave C and Farms and Foxy behind, knowing he might never see them again? Would he and Farrah even make it home on their own? And what would they find in New York if they did? Would they even be able to find their families, or would they open the door to their Papa's old apartment and find...

Derek slaps his hands over his face as his dumb as fuck brain constructs a scenario in which his twin sisters don't make it through the apocalypse. Goddamn it - this is why he doesn't watch shows like this, because his brain fucking hates him and wants him to be sad. He exhales sharply and rolls off the couch to go to his room.

He needs to FaceTime his siblings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #GlennRheeDeservedBetter #KatieAndSylviaAlsoDeserveBeter
> 
> Hello to the three (3) people reading this fic. I wanted this story to all be in the same AU so this is kind of hypothetical AU - Derek's got a super vivid imagination. I did write a bit of real Zombie Apocalypse AU a few weeks ago but it's NurseyD*x. [You can read it here if you're interested.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17562599)
> 
> Also the NurseyCharms hint is definitely thanks to Shelly's glorious fic this morning.


	4. Cup Magic

Derek frowns at the two newly acquired dead succulents on the windowsill of his bedroom. He's not entirely sure how they died - succulents are mad easy plants to look after, and Ollie and Wicky are actually two of the more responsible members of the SMH team, but somehow they managed to kill two gorgeous, prospering succulents in the space of one month. Derek's sure he's seen succulents last longer than that without even being touched.

Ollie and Wicky were just going to throw the plants out, like they were some kind of common trash; unworthy of love and affection. Luckily, Derek had managed to intercept his Hausmates on their way down to the backyard from the attic and had rescued the plants from them. The plants had been stunning in the attic before their demise, and Derek was sure he could nurse them back to full beauty, pun fully intended.

So he'd taken the pots back up to his room and done his magic; by which he means he repotted them - Ollie and Wicky had been using huge pots for small succulents, which he really should have noticed when he saw them in the attic -, treated them to some of his favourite succulent food, and placed them in the sunniest spot on his windowsill, far enough away from his other plants that, if they happened to be diseased they wouldn't pass the infection on. He hadn't known of Ollie and Wicky had named them - and he was far too embarrassed to ask, can you imagine how unchill he would have sounded? - so Derek had christened them Pacer and Oliver. He'd always found that naming plants seemed to make it easier to keep them alive.

Derek's aware that he hasn't actually done that much to help the plants. Truthfully, the plants are probably more dead than what most people could reasonably resurrect. The thing is Derek's always had a bit of a thing with plants. He's always been able to make plants grow and thrive, even in conditions where it didn't seem possible, and plants always seem to be everywhere he is. It was probably due to the fact he was around plants so much as a child. His childhood nursery was so full of plants it was basically a plant nursery - and yes, Derek's friends have spent way too long laughing about Nursey's nursery nursery. Farrah claims that pre-speech Derek would babble at the plants and gently stroke them as if they were his pets but Farrah is an older sibling that lives to torment her younger brother so her stories can't really be trusted.

From then, Derek's just kind of always felt more at home surrounded by nature. It's not like he's ever had the urge to move into a forrest or anything, he's a city boy at heart, but he's always loved to bring nature into his urban surroundings. Growing up in New York, and then consequently studying in the Andover and Samwell dorms, Nursey's never been able to have anything similar to a garden, but that's never stopped him from keeping flowerpots and herb gardens on windowsills and balconies. He's not quite sure how the plants survived considering he's barely ever in either of his parent's homes frequently enough during the school year to provide proper plant maintenance and the dorms at both his schools have been kinda dark and dirty and not at all the best place for life, human or plant, but somehow they were always healthy and Instagram levels of pretty.

That thought reminds him that these plants need to have their "before" pictures taken for his Instagram story. He grabs his phone and takes a picture, making sure the sunlight is glinting of the plants just right. He wants to tag Ollie and Wicky in the post, but then they'll know about his secret Instagram account, @nurseysnursery, and that would not be chill. He really hopes that they make it through okay - not that any of his plants have never not made it through okay, but it'd be really embarrassing if he never posted up "after" pics of Oliver and Pacer.

Suddenly, Derek wants to be outside. He grabs his bookbag and water bottle and starts walking down to Lake Quad. He's always kind of liked being outside. He's not big on camping or hiking or anything - the scenery is gorgeous but he's a little too vain for any of that stuff - but he loves sitting in parks or gardens and just being with the flowers and plants. He remembers begging his grandparents to take him to Central Park as a child, where he would just lie down underneath a tree and think while his grandparents read newspapers and books. His first date with Pips was in the Andover Rose Garden - he'd found the most perfect red rose, flawless from petals to thorns, for his new boyfriend - and the two of them had spent most of their free time there until they'd graduated. Even now, Derek prefers hanging out at the trees of Lake Quad to everywhere else on campus; he's well known for wanting to do his homework in leaf piles instead of in his room or the library. In his defense, Lake Quad inspires much more creativity than any boring library or bedroom ever could.

Derek reaches Lake Quad in record time and grins at the sight before him. It's autumn, Derek's favourite season - and the ground is littered in colourful red and yellow leaves. There's a particularly crunchy looking pile accumulated at the base of one of the big trees, and Derek wastes no time in dropping down into it. He feels strangely at peace, in this random-ass pile of leaves, even though he knows he's going to be surrounded by leaves for the rest of the day now, and Bitty's going to tell him off when he inevitably tracks them back into the Haus.

The thing is, Derek's got a thing about leaves and it's somehow even weirder than the thing he has about plants. Somehow, leaves follow him everywhere; no matter what the season, no matter how few leaves seem to be actually present on the trees or the ground on campus, Derek always finds leaves stuck to his sweater, and buried in his hair and decomposing in a pile in the sunniest corner of his bedroom. Shitty once claimed that he actually saw a leaf follow Nursey the whole way from Faber to the Haus one time - just floating behind him as if it was swimming, stopping when Nursey stopped, turning when Nursey turned - but Derek's pretty sure that Shitty was just high. There's no way that actually happened.

(although, Johnson did tell him that leaves do, in fact, follow him, and it was a specifically designed character trait that someone named Ngozi gave to him, but Derek has no idea what that means and he has no intention of working it out).

Sylvia and Katie say it's magic, the thing Derek has with plants and in particular the thing Derek has about leaves. And sure, if leaves were actually following him then Derek would believe them but, as it is, he doesn't think his skills are magical. It's not like he's that one girl from Sky High that could make plants grow just by moving her hands near them - although he would love to be able to attack the LAX bros with plants like she did, he's just saying - he's just a bit more in touch with plants than everyone else is. Everyone has their own little skill - like Mami can make people open up with just a single look, and Bitty can make pies appear within seconds of stepping into a kitchen, and Caitlin Farmer can strip away layers of sadness just by pressing her lips to your forehead. Derek's skill is just being really good with plants.

Derek fishes his headphones out of his bookbag and puts them on, flipping over to an instrumental playlist on Spotify. He lies down in his leaf pile, and closes his eyes, letting the sun warm his skin. He grins. He's happy, and he knows Oliver and Pacer are going to make full recoveries.

Everything is as it should be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You might be wondering! Did I post the Day 5 chapter early because I didn't know what to write for the Day 4 prompt? You would wonder that.
> 
> Also I'd like to make it clear that while Nursey **thinks** he doesn't have plant magic he totally does.


End file.
